Hockey gold medalist tells students to get SMART

Jeff Green | Nov 19, 2009

Katie Weatherston with her Olympic gold medal.

Katie Weatherston has faced her share of adversity during he hockey career, and she shared some of the pain and triumphs that she has experienced with students in Central Frontenac on Tuesday.

Weatherston comes from Thunder Bay, which made is harder for her to get noticed as a hockey player when she was a teenager. When she overcame the odds and made the hockey team at Dartmouth University, she came to the attention of national team coaches, but at her first opportunity to try out for the team she played terribly.

“I didn’t believe in myself enough” she told the audience a Sharbot Lake High School.

Still she was invited to try out for the 2006 Olympic team, but just before a one moth training camp, she had to have surgery on her two ankles.

“While the other athletes were getting stronger and stronger by skating every day, I was learning how to walk,” she said.

By the end of the camp she was able to ride on a 200 bicycle trip with the other athletes, but on the last day of the camp she suffered a bicycle crash which left her injured again, and left her faced bruised and swollen as well.

Somehow after that she persevered and ended up making the team, which went on to win Olympic gold in Torino, Italy and win and the 2007 World Championship in Winnipeg.

She had faced other obstacles since then, however, and a major concussion and other injuries in 2009 have led to her not being on the 2020 Olympic team that will compete in Vancouver next February.

Undaunted, Weatherston has been bringing a message of focus and determination to speaking engagements at schools and sports camps in recent months.

When she tells students that obstacles can be turned into challenges that can be overcome, she has the background to demonstrate that.

She also emplyes something that teachers are familiar with – SMART goal setting.

“Goal setting must be very Specific. You can’t just say ‘I want to be successful and rich, you have to decide specifically what you want to do.

Goals should also be Measurable If you want to go to teachers college and you need an 85% average, you have a specific, measurable goal,” she said.

“Attainability is important as well, as are realism and timeliness,” she added.

Weatherston used her experience in the Torino Olympics to demonstrate how important it was to maintain focus on the goals that she had set and that the team had set in the face of massive distractions.

“I could have become lost in the Olympic experience and the other, famous athletes, just as students can get lost in the social life od High School. But I had to remember why I was there, just as students sometimes need to remember why they are in school,” she said.

It was a message that teacher’s deliver to students often.

But teacher’s don’t have an Olympic gold medal to demonstrate what SMART goal setting can bring about.